Dangarembga scoops PEN award
ZIMBABWE’S multi-award winning novelist and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga (pictured), on Wednesday scooped the PEN Award for Freedom of Expression.
She was conferred with the award at the 26th online edition of the Winternachten International Literature Festival in e Hague, the Netherlands.
e PEN Award for Freedom of Expression recognises and honours a writer’s significant contribution and commitment to free speech around the world despite the dangers of political persecution. Previous winners include Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, and Ugandan academic and poet Stella Nyanzi, who was incarcerated for criticising Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in political power since 1986.
While the award celebrates her work as an author it also recognises her as an activist in Zimbabwe fighting for freedom of expression.
Dangarembga is the founding member of PEN Zimbabwe, most known for her groundbreaking 1988 novel, Nervous Conditions, which follows the life of a Zimbabwean girl who navigates the precarity of post-colonial Rhodesia in the 1960s. is past summer, Dangarembga’s is Mourna
ble Body, which depicts the political landscape of Zimbabwe, was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize; and this news followed reports of Dangarembga’s arrest by police for her participation in peaceful protests against corrupt governance. Dangarembga’s arrest was met with swift criticisms from the literary community, including PEN International.
Introducing the award at the Winternachten International Literature Festival e Hague, writer and PEN International president Jennifer Clement said: “It is an honour to give Tsitsi Dangarembga the PEN Award for Freedom of Expression. Her brave work as a writer, filmmaker and activist in Zimbabwe was once again in the spotlight last year when she was arrested for anti-corruption protests. Dangarembga’s work centres on the lack of freedoms for women in Zimbabwe’s patriarchal world.
“Her debut novel Nervous Condi
tions became the very first published English novel by a black woman from Zimbabwe. I am particularly delighted to give the award to Tsitsi today, a special day which marks the 50th’s anniversary of the PEN Emergency Fund, an international fund for writers in dire straits of which we are extremely proud”.
Dangarembga founded the production house Nyerai Films and the International Images Film Festival for Women, as well as the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa where she works as director.
Last year, she was among several activists who were arrested while participating in anti-corruption demonstrations and demanding the release of opposition leader, Jacob Ngarivhume and journalist, Hopewell Chin’ono.
She was detained overnight and then charged with incitement to commit violence and breaching anti-coronavirus health regulations. Dangarembga was released on bail and ordered to attend court on September 18. She was ordered to surrender her passport to the authorities and to report to a police station every week until her next appearance in court.
Her case has not progressed, and she continues to make court appearances as ordered. PEN International has been calling for the immediate dropping of all charges against her since August 2020.
Dangarembga said: “I didn’t understand myself to be an activist as such, I look at myself as a responsible citizen; someone who cares about the way the country is going.
“I’m primarily a writer and filmmaker and I look at social issues in my writing and in my screen plays; and so it was quite normal for me to be interested in the goings-on of society around me.”
Said PEN International on its website: “ e date of the award is of symbolic importance as it marks the PEN Emergency Fund’s 50th anniversary. Since its founding in 1971, the PEN Emergency Fund has provided vital support to writers who have been persecuted for their work and are in acute financial need, including their families.”
e award has been given yearly to writers who have been persecuted for their work and continue working despite their persecution since 2005. Formerly known as the Oxfam Novib/ PEN Award for Freedom of Expression, it was originally made as a collaboration of PEN International, the PEN Emergency Fund and Oxfam Novib. — Staff Writer.